'Fringe' Recap: The Bullet That Saved the WorldSaturday, October 27, 2012

Things start out entertainingly dark and weird in tonight's episode and descend into sadness and despair ... kind of like life and definitely in the style of Fringe.

Peter deftly siphons gas out of an abandoned car as the story opens and then, as you all have surely done, sees a wind-up toy monkey in a cage crashing cymbals together, and has an instant hankering to buy a gift for Etta at a pawn shop across the way. A high-ranking bald Informer lurks in the dusty shadows and hands him a perfect necklace as a gift as he tries to read Peter's mind. Peter starts freaking out, fills his head with confusing images, and flees, throwing a large bill at the clerk as he exits.

A confrontation with the uniforms ensues outside, and Peter slyly escapes down a conveniently open and available manhole. After his pursuers throw a nasty cartridge into the hole, he races through the underground pipelines and ends up unconscious underneath a freeway overpass. A kid who looks perfectly well groomed but has dirt on his face -- supposedly an orphan or abandoned/abducted child -- plays a few bars on a harmonica and tells him he came from a manhole and where he is.

Broyles learns from the bald Informer that one of his men is suspected of being a spy and has been detained. Relations get more strained as the men's mutual distrust festers.

Meanwhile, Peter's cronies toil to free more tapes from the stubborn amber with a blow torch, a project whose slow progress frustrates Walter. After having an epiphany (fairly common for Walter), he is sure the plans they need for victory are hidden under a subway station in Jersey where he stashed them as a nerdy, paranoid child.

While exploring the underground subway vault, Etta and Olivia have a sentimental conversation about a necklace Etta has worn since she found it as a child in their house. It's a chain with a bullet pendant, and Olivia tells her that Etta's father used to call it "The Bullet That Saved the World," but no other details are forthcoming ... big surprise. Etta gets an electronic message that they have been spotted and insists everyone run away and leave her to fight the enemy. A brutal confrontation ensues as everyone flees the scene, and the enemy is obliterated by gunfire and a magic mist that seals their mouths and noses shut.

Broyles tracks down his old friends as they wait for word from Etta. He gives them an arsenal of high tech weapons and cool spy stuff from his trunk and reveals that Etta convinced him to fight for her side after admitting she was Peter and Olivia's daughter. Broyles gets word he has been found and the gang is on the lam again.

The gang finds the secret document Walter hid, but then Etta is besieged by bad guys and dies at the hands of an Informer. As she bleeds out, Mom, Dad, et al. pry the bloody bullet necklace from her warm, dead hands.

As the Informers examine Etta's corpse, one notices the missing necklace and vows to learn more as the buildings with the evidence Walter needed explode in the background.